


Grounded in Flight

by Nadler



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, Goalies, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 17:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/pseuds/Nadler
Summary: A goalie is weird. A goalie is someone who sees things that others can't. From their bulky pads to their painted masks, they're singular. Least of all, of course, are a goalie's wings.(Because of course, goalies have wings. Goalies are weird.)Or: Five goalies and their wings





	Grounded in Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleeperservice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeperservice/gifts).



> No excuses except goalies. And wings. 
> 
> Hey, also, you egged me on.

There is a story about how goalies gained their wings. It begins something like this: 

The Hockey Gods, in their imminent (and immanent) wisdom, crafted hockey into the hearts of men. They whispered the sounds of sluicing skates into newly-Canadian ears and sparked the yearning of sports from pasthoods. This was before, when the hockey gods were more than abstract nothings, inklings of what they would be. 

They forged forwards with the fierce call of victory. 

They drew defenseman with the backbone of duty. 

(They made rovers, once, but then they decided they were unnecessary, when the players knew what they were doing--for the most part.) 

Last of all, they made goalies. They were odd. Arguably, they had the most important task of them all--and the most thankless. They lived more than a little in their heads, for the most part. Everyone said they were a little unearthly.

 

* * *

 

Ilya stretches his wings out for the camera in the same way he never did when he was on the other side of the interview. When nosy reporters tried to make him flinch, when none of his teammates understood why he never had them out, why they were always swirls and dots on his skin instead of out on the ice. Most goalies don't wear their wings all the time. They can be heavy. That's why goalies don't fly, heavy wings. 

Also, it is hard to play hockey in the air. Ice is on the ground. 

Even when Ilya's wings did show up, everyone tried to wave it off as a trick. Every goalie's wings come out at a shutout, and of course it looked magical. They always do--goalies, masked men who protect the net. More ferocious than bears. 

(Most goalies' wings also come out, reflexes, after a blowout loss. Ilya is one of those goalies, and his wings remind him that it's only a game. He is more than a goaltender, and there is more life than hockey. He wishes that sometimes, people would carve it into their bones.) 

Ilya never showed his wings off for the camera before, when they wanted him to. They wouldn't understand. No one understands. As it is, it barely shows up, a glint and a flash here and there. His budding reporter career can be helped by that. Let them guess. 

Probably none of them will understand. 

His wings are made of starlight. 

 

* * *

 

They say one of the Hockey Gods is a goalie, or maybe all of them are. In any case, goalies are marked--some are born knowing that they are goalies. Most goalies are sure later, when there's no going back. There's no stopping, not really, even when you're off the ice. 

You can take the goalie out of hockey, but you can't take the hockey's claim on the goalie.

 

* * *

 

 _Everyone_ says puberty is torture, but Pekka doesn't feel like himself. For all that everyone, his parents and his coaches, say that it's normal, it can't be. Pekka hardly thinks he can walk without falling on his face, some days. He wakes up itchy, other days, but he doesn't say a word about that, not when the coaches keep saying that he needs to try harder, needs to train more, needs to focus. 

It's a little hard to focus when you can barely control your limbs. 

"You'll grow into it," they tell Pekka, usually with a clap on his shoulder. Then the whistle blows and Pekka tries, tries to stop the puck, but his hands won't do what he knows he should be doing. 

Pekka is fifteen. 

 

He tells his dad, "I don't want to play hockey anymore," and he almost manages to swallow the lump in his throat. 

His dad deliberates, but he nods. "If you don't want to," is the only answer. He's never been one to push Pekka into something if he didn't want to, but he does ask, "Why?" 

"They want me to do too much," Pekka says, trying not to sound like a whiner. They do. Finland asks a lot of its goalies. His coaches want him to pick, now, to start dedicating himself hockey full-time, or in the summer at all. They want to work him harder than he's ever known. They want to whittle down his summer, and he doesn't want that. 

So that's how he quits hockey. There's a nagging part of him that said he should have quit earlier, that it was fun, but it's getting hard, that he was only playing at being a goalie. 

The only reason he started at all was because he was the youngest, and he knows that as much as he loves playing goalie, it was only an act. 

 

Time passes, and Pekka's friends have mostly forgiven him for quitting hockey, and they still play ball. It's what he wanted. 

He still itches. At some point, he considers trying to go see a doctor, but it's not like it _hurts_ or aches. "Growing pains," are what they'll call it. 

 

Pekka looks at his reflection in the mirror. There is a little edge of black on his shoulder, and he touches it, disbelieving. It doesn't come off, and he still itches. He scratches at it. 

The feeling comes in waves, and Pekka wonders what it really means, not daring to look at what his back might look like. By the time August comes around, by the time everyone else has gone past the traditions of new and old gear, of early season beginnings, there's a pang in Pekka's chest. 

He misses hockey. 

Pekka is a goalie, and he's quit hockey. He swallows the lump in his throat and prepares to _beg_. 

 

* * *

 

Goalies are marked with wings. No one is quite sure about when the first goalie found his wings, but it was entrenched in hockey since the very beginning. 

There's never been any reports of a goalie flying with their wings, but no one would be surprised. They come in all shapes and sizes: small enough to nestle against the skin even when revealed, large enough to be a hindrance; sprawling dark ink across shoulder blades, light lines of possibility; most often, they are feathered, but there are others. 

And even then, sometimes, like a goalie, wings are weird. 

A goalie's wings weather with the team, they also say, and it's true. The wings of champions are usually glossy and sleek, the wings of the downtrodden matted, ragged with weariness. Goalies preen, sometimes, but that can only go so far. 

 

* * *

 

Kari comes back from the Olympics with white wings. The first time he stretches them out in Dallas, there's a shocked silence. 

"I thought they were brown?" Jamie asks, slowly, trying to decide to believe his eyes or not. Maybe he's been mistaken.

Tyler asks, "Is it like bleaching hair?"

Rous takes the moment to interject his opinion. "I like the new look, though. Classic." 

Kari mumbles a little before coughing and looking around. He folds his wings in, trying to make them less conspicuous, but he's a goalie, and wings on people tend to be conspicuous anyway unless they're hidden away, etched on his skin.

Usually he doesn't mind having them out, a mess of brown with a few black primaries. 

"What's that?" Goose tries to be gentle, but they're hockey players, the team is insanely curious. 

"They just--" Kari frowns. "They do that." And while he's at it, he might as well tell the whole story, "Brown to white in the cold, like a kärppä." They'll go back to brown very soon, especially with the weather in Dallas; even week long road trips to Canada don't do much more than mottle the scapulars, where his wings and skin meet.

It's a wonder the team hadn't noticed before.

"Is _that_ why?" Eaks asks. "I thought you were just slick." 

Kari purses his lips, decides to smile. "That too." 

 

* * *

 

They say that the wings only come out for a shutout.

Everyone knows that that's not true. Strong emotions, of course, and of the kind that relates to goaltending, that forces them out. A shutout is as good as a demoralizing loss, for that. Bringing them out of one's own accord is more skill than talent. 

Sometimes practice helps.

Only sometimes. For some, it's easier than others, but no goalie can truly control their wings. 

 

* * *

 

The first time Jon's wings come out, it's at a spectacular, spectacular blowout loss. 

He's twelve. All hockey goalie gear, theoretically, is supposed to accommodate wings, but all that means is that the backs of his jersey are easy to tear.

For a moment, he can't think. The game's over; Jon sees a shadow on the ice, hears a strange sound, and only then does he look up and move. There's a flash of grey in his peripheral vision. 

He tries to stand up, but he loses his edge and ends up with a face full of ice. 

 

At a shutout, his wings hit the crossbar. The first time, Jon almost thinks he might have broken something--but no, it's only the shock of air. 

 

They keep doing that, but Jon gets used to it. The weight of his wings are a comfort. At some point, he doesn't know what he'd do without them. 

Jon pitches nine shutouts his senior year of high school, and he's unsettled between them all. The losses happen, of course, but never often enough that he can really count on them. Aim for the win, aim for the wings--it's good enough. 

The next year, he has none. That's when he figures that the wings are a consolation for a really bad night, too.

 

There's one last picture of him in his college's trophy case--from his sophomore year, in the playoffs--wings spread and poised like he was posing for the camera. 

 

His first pro game, Jon loses, terribly. It feels like it should have been enough, but evidently, the summer was not kind. Jon doesn't even get wings out of it. 

The next game, he aims for the shutout, and Jon can still hardly believe the feeling. For good measure, he has three more shutouts by the end of the season, and in the AHL, no less. 

 

"Hey, they match the uniform," they start saying, when Jon's been on the Kings for three games, wings out two nights out of three. "Why shouldn't he have them out?" 

When it's a loss, though, there's always the creeping undertone of resentment. But Jon's beyond trying to make something of those types of comments. At the end of a game, at least, no matter how he did, Jon has his wings more often than not. He's a goalie. 

It's very simple, that way. 

 

* * *

 

Wings can be the measure of a locker room, of a team, but too many think that wings can be a measure of character. White wings, dark wings, bat wings, or insectile--there's no rhyme or pattern to the wings. 

Still, some people think bigger wings are better, and that smaller wings can mean a goalie that never lives up to their potential. 

Goalies and their wings can't be separated, in anyone's mind. 

 

* * *

 

Roberto thinks one thing in Game 1: he's going to die if all of these hockey games need to be finished in 4OT. He's going to _die_ , and it's not going to be because he's allergic to his own feathers. 

(He's not, by the way, but he could die, if so, also.) 

Anyway, the best games end with a couple of pairs of wings, even if Roberto's are a bit undersized. He might not see much of Turco other than his reddish plumage, but he knows that he's just as tired. 

And they have to play again in two days. Two days. All Roberto wants to do is go back home and crawl into bed. 

 

Turco wears his wings for warmups. Because of course he does, and Roberto really can't fault any other goalies for their superstitions, but it feels like it should be a slap in the face. He puts on a smile and tries to ignore it during warmups.

He puts them away before puck drop, though, which makes it even _worse_ when the Canucks get shut out by the goalie on the other side. 

Roberto expects the media wants him to say that the guy with the wings deserves the win, but fuck that. It's a little showboaty, and a win is a win is a win. He doesn't say either, at least, to the cameras, but in the future, the soundbyte of, "I'm a little sick of seeing red," is highly, highly ironic. 

There is blessed, peaceful calm when the Canucks take Game 3 on Dallas ice. And no one's wings show up. 

Game 4: Roberto starts breathing easy again. 

Turco takes Game 5 like a bloody avenging angel, and Roberto hates that comparison, but it's the only way to describe the anger simmering under his skin. Objectively, it's the playoffs--and well, if they needed a miracle to win Game 5, good on the Stars. 

Then, the Stars take Game 6, and the Canucks need a miracle, now, when Marty fucking Turco has stolen three games, complete with wings. 

 

They get one, mostly in the form of the Stars defense falling apart in a way that their goalie can't recover. It only takes one goal to break them, and Vancouver has many coming to them. 

Roberto may relish the handshake line a little too much, with a smile on his face and Turco's slumping plumage at the other end of it. 

 

* * *

 

Wings may _make_ a goalie, but they don't say anything about how much one is worth.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, Turco was not very superstitious, but hey. He was all for 100000% energy.


End file.
